Multiple word search and replace in notepad++

Question

Does anyone know how to replace several different words all at once in notepad++.

For example;

I have "good", "great" and "fine" and I want to replace them with "bad", "worse" and "not" all at once

I know that I can replace them one by one, but the problem I am facing requires that I replace a lot of words, which is not convenient to do.

Answer 1

Try a regular expression replace of (good)|(great)|(fine) with (?1bad)(?2worse)(?3not).

The search looks for either of three alternatives separated by the |. Each alternative has ist own capture brackets. The replace uses the conditional form ?Ntrue-expression:false-expression where N is decimal digit, the clause checks whether capture expression N matches.

Tested in Notepad++ 6.3

Update:

You can find good documentation, about the new PRCE Regular Expressions, used by N++, since the 6.0 version, at the TWO addresses below :

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_48_0/libs/regex/doc/html/boost_regex/syntax/perl_syntax.html

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_48_0/libs/regex/doc/html/boost_regex/format/boost_format_syntax.html

The FIRST one concerns the syntax of regular expressions in SEARCH

The SECOND one concerns the syntax of regular expressions in REPLACEMENT

And, if you can understand "written French", I made a tutorial about PCRE regular expressions, stored in the personal site of Christian Cuvier (cchris), at the address below :

http://oedoc.free.fr/Regex/TutorielRegex.zip

(Extracted from a posting by THEVENOT Guy at http://sourceforge.net/p/notepad-plus/discussion/331754/thread/ca059a0a/ )

Answer 2

Install Python Script plugin from Plugin Manager.

Create a file with your substitutions (e.g., C:/Temp/Substitutions.txt), separate values with space:

good bad great worse fine not 

Create a new script:

with open('C:/Temp/Substitutions.txt') as f:     for l in f:         s = l.split()         editor.replace(s[0], s[1]) 

Run the new script against the text you want to substitute.